California fires: smart speakers and emergency alerts

[cma at cmadams.net (Chris Adams)]

Once upon a time, Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> said:
> After wildfires killed 40+ people in northern California last fall,
> I asked if Amazon and Google had any plans to include emergency
> alerts in their smart speaker/intelligent assistant products.  Smart
> speakers seem like a way to alert people to imminent
> life-threatening danger during the night when they may be asleep or
> not aware of it.

My biggest concern is them making such alerts mandatory.  At a minimum
they should be opt-out; a one-time notice during setup (or when the
functionality is added) to allow opt-in would be better IMHO.  You don't
know what I might be streaming on that speaker; could be I'm listening
to scanner traffic from storm spotters for example.

I have been closely watching local TV station radar coverage of a
radar-indicated tornado heading towards my home when the cable system
takes over my TiVo to play the NWS tornado warning message.  That takes
a couple of minutes minutes, during which changing the channel is
disabled (and there's no way to opt out of such cable-sent alerts).
This is highly counter-productive; it just means that now I know when
there's dangerous weather headed towards my home, I cannot use TV for
tracking it unless I get out an antenna-fed portable TV.

-- 
Chris Adams <cma at cmadams.net>